hedstrom@sirius.UVic.CA (Brad Hedstrom) (11/21/90)
I am in the process of switching from, you guessed it, Word to Nisus.
I'm quite impressed with Nisus but have a couple of questions for the
Nisus studs out there. I have RTFM, well 90% of it, and am having a
couple of problems.
1. When I choose the date format to look like March 20, 1963 I just
get the year (1963). The month and date don't appear. It works fine
when I use the long format Tuesday March 20,1963 or the short form
3/20/63. None of the other date formats work properly. I thought that
it may have been the "Date" CDEV but I removed it and still no go.
Is this a bug or am I a moron? (OK, maybe I'm a moron but what's wrong
here?)
2. I'm trying to convert my Word style sheets to Nisus style sheets
and rulers. There is one thing that I've not been able to solve. Word
has a paragraph format command called "Keep with Next Paragraph." I
find this extremely useful when dealing with section headings. Right
now (no, not WriteNow) Nisus does things like this:
1. Introduction
---------------------------------page break-------------------------
The subsequent paragraph ...
I don't want to allow a page break between a section heading and the
next paragraph. I know how to do it on an individual basis with "Keep
on same page" but how can I incorporate it into my heading style?
Thanks,
_____________________________________________________________________________
Brad Hedstrom, University of Victoria, ECE Dept.
Internet: hedstrom@sirius.uvic.ca
UUCP: ...!{uw-beaver,ubc-vision}!uvicctr!hedstrombaumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (11/27/90)
In article <HEDSTROM.90Nov21144844@sirius.UVic.CA>, hedstrom@sirius (Brad Hedstrom) writes: >2. I'm trying to convert my Word style sheets to Nisus style sheets >and rulers. There is one thing that I've not been able to solve. Word >has a paragraph format command called "Keep with Next Paragraph." I >find this extremely useful when dealing with section headings. Right >now (no, not WriteNow) Nisus does things like this: > > 1. Introduction >---------------------------------page break------------------------- > The subsequent paragraph ... > >I don't want to allow a page break between a section heading and the >next paragraph. I know how to do it on an individual basis with "Keep >on same page" but how can I incorporate it into my heading style? Nisus has a style called "Keep text on same page" which will do what you want. It's a little more flexible than Word's "Keep with next paragraph", since it also does double-duty as a style that provides widow and orphan control (in fact, one of the supplied macros goes through all your text and applies it to the first and last two lines of every paragraph). So you just select your heading and as many lines of the following paragraph as you feel should be kept with it and apply the style. Of course, where Nisus really shines is in its macros. It would be easy to write a macro that searched for all paragraphs with a "Heading" style, selected the paragraph and the following N lines of the next paragraph and applied the style throughout your document. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman
jeremyr@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Jeremy Roussak) (12/04/90)
In <2850@esquire.dpw.com> baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) writes: >Of course, where Nisus really shines is in its macros. It would be >easy to write a macro that searched for all paragraphs with a >"Heading" style, selected the paragraph and the following N lines >of the next paragraph and applied the style throughout your document. I must confess that this was one of the things that irritated me about Nisus when I reviewed it recently for a British magazine. There are, IMHO, too many things in Nisus which have been left to macros, widow and orphan control being just one. Of course you can write wonderful macros which do lots of nice formatting things (such as smart quotes), but if you have to reformat a document before it's printed you start to drift away from WYSIWYG. I found myself writing a Print macro to do all this and then being (often pleasantly) surpised at the way my printed document looked. Come back nroff, all is forgiven :-) Jeremy Roussak
baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (12/06/90)
In article <3125@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk>, jeremyr@cs (Jeremy Roussak) writes: >I must confess that this was one of the things that irritated me about Nisus >when I reviewed it recently for a British magazine. There are, IMHO, too >many things in Nisus which have been left to macros, widow and orphan >control being just one. Yes, though it also has its benefits. You get greater flexibility, for one, and it allows you to change your mind about something like "Smart Quotes" without penalty (i.e., you could type your document in regular quotes and then change your mind and convert them all to typesetter quotes with one menu selection). I have a macro that does general cleanup of a document (search and replace multiple spaces at the end of a sentence for one space, hyphenate everything, run the Widow/Orphan Control macro, change errant "--" sequences into em-dashes, etc.); all I have to do is remember to run it when I'm ready to print. > Of course you can write wonderful macros which >do lots of nice formatting things (such as smart quotes), but if you >have to reformat a document before it's printed you start to drift away >from WYSIWYG. I found myself writing a Print macro to do all this and then >being (often pleasantly) surpised at the way my printed document looked. I particularly like the supplied macro that turns your "fi", "ff", etc., sequences into ligatures, then prints the document, then turns them all back again. This is great, since you generally don't type in ligatures (at least I don't), and they give the spell-checker no end of headaches. >Come back nroff, all is forgiven :-) Heck, I'm still writing man pages in it... but I'd sure prefer to use Nisus at work. Too bad they don't have a Sun port... :-) -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman